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Michigan’s Line 5 agreement with Enbridge is just more can-kicking

There are, at minimum, three major red flags in Gov. Snyder’s announcement this week of a deal with Enbridge over its 64-year-old Line 5 oil and gas pipe running beneath the Straits of Mackinac.

The first is that when government doesn’t want to do something about a problem (in this case, order a full and permanent shut-down of Line 5), it studies it. Naturally, Snyder’s deal includes a provision to “study” the living heck out of replacing the pipe with a tunnel.

In politics, this is called “kicking the can down the road.” The agreement says various elements of the study will be done next summer, just months before Snyder leaves office for good. It also is written with the slipperiest of verbiage, saying the state and Enbridge agree to thereafter “initiate” discussions regarding a “potential” further agreement with a “goal” of executing the agreement by next August. Does that sound like government in action to you? The truth is Snyder knows any further decision about the pipeline – given the flaccid language – can easily be left to the next governor, which is good for him but potentially disastrous for the Great Lakes in that it allows more time for a disaster to occur.

The beauty of can-kicking, though, is it allows the kicker to seem as if he’s being tough and proactive without actually doing much, as you can hear in this Snyder statement: “Business as usual by Enbridge is not acceptable, and we are going to ensure the highest level of environmental safety standards are implemented to protect one of Michigan’s most valuable natural resources.”

Sounds good,right? Except “the highest level of environmental safety standards” would be shutting it down. So Enbridge is, in fact, going to go about business as usual. The state is, to its credit, requiring Enbridge to replace a damaged section of the line. But aside from that and the irritation of a few other mandated safety precautions, 23 million gallons of oil and liquid natural gas will still be coursing through Line 5 each and every day until such time as the study is done and GOP lawmakers – who have a virtual forever-and-ever lock on state government thanks to gerrymandering – suddenly discover their inner environmentalist.

Odds of that happening? Zilch. There’s never going to be a tunnel, nor an order to shut down the pipeline for good. You know it. I know it. And Enbridge most assuredly knows it. It’ll be business as usual until government forces their hand.

And what would cause a pro-business legislature headed by a business-first governor who got elected because he promised to run government like a business (which worked out so wonderfully well for Flint) to suddenly force a business, albeit a Canadian one, to do something it doesn’t want to do?

A massive oil spill, of course, which is red flag No. 2 for me.

A risk analysis released last week says the chances of Line 5 rupture are low through 2053, and I have no reason to doubt it. Except for this: I’m a homeowner. And as a homeowner, I know damned well that pipes leak and pipes break, usually when you’re away on vacation. And that’s my problem with any pipeline, much less this pipeline, running beneath the Great Lakes. Pipes are made by man, and if man makes it, it can break. Nature is especially good at that. The odds of it happening to Line 5 may be low, but if it happens the damage to Great Lakes could be enormous. (A University of Michigan study said 700 miles of shoreline could be fouled in a worst-case scenario.)

Which brings me to red flag No. 3 – trust. If there’s ever a company that hasn’t earned it, it’s Enbridge, which paid a $61 million fine as part of a $177 million settlement for a ginormous oil spill into the Kalamazoo River in 2010, which took years and a billion dollars to clean up.

Just last month, we learned Enbridge also knew about but didn’t tell the state about damage to the protective coating on Line 5 for three years, which prompted the head of the state’s pipeline board to say, “Enbridge owes the people of Michigan … an apology. This issue is too important to the people of Michigan to not tell the truth in a timely manner, and right now any trust we had in Enbridge has been seriously eroded.”

I repeat: That was just a month ago.

Why would we, as a state, entrust the safety of the Great Lakes to a company like Enbridge just so it can make money?

That makes no sense to me.

Maybe I need to commission a study to help me figure it all out.

As a post-script, here’s the Sierra Club of Michigan’s view: “Gov. Rick Snyder announced a deal with Enbridge that is awful for Michigan and the Great Lakes but means billions of dollars in future oil profits for the Canadian pipeline transport company and guarantees the future flow of oil through the Straits of Mackinac. He did this without even bothering to consult his own Pipeline Safety Advisory Board and did it over the objections of tens of thousands of businesses and people. Snyder cited the need to continue providing propane to the UP through Line 5 – a problem that even industry experts say could be solved with a single 4-inch pipeline from Superior, WI to Rapid River, MI. Instead, Snyder put Michigan on the path to a potential massive dig that will likely destroy fishing habitat in the Straits in violation of an 1836 treaty with Native American tribes and leave us with oil pipelines threatening the Great Lakes. Quite a legacy.”

And here’s the statement from FLOW (For Love of Water), an environmental organization in Traverse City: “Nothing short of ending the flow of oil through the Straits will protect the Great Lakes from a catastrophic spill. It’s remarkable given Enbridge’s pattern and practice of lying to the state about Line 5’s condition that the governor is now trusting Enbridge to abide by a new agreement. This puts the future of the Great Lakes in the hands of Enbridge.”

Comments

Putting a replacement pipeline 50′ and more below the bottom of the straights of Mackinac is an enormous improvement over the current line 5 placement. I am very happy to see this environmentally sound alternative coming to fruition. I hope that liberal, environmental terrorists don’t try to sabotage the new buried pipeline. This is a standard practice behavior for such Democrats. Given the environmental impact that such hate driven saboteurs could impart, there should be armed guards that shoot any marauding, liberal, environmental terrorists. Shoot them before they can blow anything up.

No where in the article was a pipeline 50′ under the straits talked about, did you pull that out or your keester? People that love the earth are “Democratic liberal environmental terrorists” ? Can’t Repubs be E. T’s? Is this just another poor attempt to bash the other side? So many questions, wasted on a moronic anti earth individual

The fact that the replacement for Enbridge line 5 is deep under the bottom of the Mackinac Straights bottom is part of the basic design which is public record. It goes underground long before it reaches the shoreline and stays far below the straights bottom until long after cleared on the other side. There is close to zero probability for a pipeline rupture. You should brush up on the actual design and don’t rely on Fake News, biased articles for info.

Okay, you guys… I suggest that we do not need any underwater pipeline or underwater tunnel, at all. If Enbridge wants to move petroleum across the Straits, and if they intend to spend big money to remedy the situation, they could put a new pipeline across the Mackinac Bridge.

They could run it right along the sides, below the traffic level. I seems to me this would be MUCH cheaper and safer than building a new tunnel and pipe under the water. Then, if it starts to leak, we will see it immediately, and shut it down and fix it. And, the leak will not go straight into the water.

We could post Working Dad’s proposed armed right-winger guards right on the bridge, and they could monitor the new bridg -pipe 24/7, and sound the alarm if it starts to leak.

You want to put a pipeline on a heavily travelled bridge that was never designed to transport pipeline oil or propane, with semi trucks able to run right into it at any time? I would not support that concept. No intelligent person would support that concept.

The Mackinac Bridge is designed to move many feet in all directions during windy conditions. You seriously want to put an oil/propane pipeline on the bridge that was never designed to carry a pipeline, so all of the line junction joints are constantly strained under such dramatic movement 24/7? I would not support such an irresponsible concept. I doubt any intelligent person would support such a concept. Your idea is rejected.

So fred, jim says, tom says and andrew are experts on the new pipeline that needs to be put in place of the 67 year old pipe line.
Andy did say that there was a tunnel being proposed to replace pipe Enbridge no. 5, I did not se where he said that it would be 50 feet underground.
As far as I see it no. 5 needs to be shut down.. I would never trust a report that comes from endbridge about the chances of the pipe not rupturing until 2053. No way will I trust such a report that makes such a claim, I do not care if it comes from the federal level or state level either.
I would also like John Mantonich’s view of the pipes going under the Mackinaw bridge.
Andrew, gerrymandering has been practiced by the democrats and the republicans for years. I think that the name gerrymandering came about in the 1800’s.
The drawing of the congressional and state houses districts needs to taken out of the hands of the politicians and given to a committee of citizens. The committee would be comprised of citizens from both political parties. Hopefully that might making the size of the districts nearly the same.
NO more of a district being 3 miles wide by 10 miles long configured to favor one party or another.
The districts would have to be nearly square or rectangle in shape.

I come from a family that started in the oil business near Oil City, PA in the 1890’s. Oil is the reason my grandparents (in the ’30’s) and parents (mid 40’s right after WWII) moved to this great state. Over the past few months I have tried to gather what information I could about Enbridge and Line 5 from as many reputable sources as I could. What really surprised me was when I contacted old family friends who were, or still are, in the business. Of the eleven contacted, nine were very blunt, “Shut it down now!” One offered, “Give them a year, then shut it down.” The last one said, “As it is now, it will fail, but who the hell knows when.”
So, my gut said we shouldn’t take the risk of leaving in in operation. Now, my brain says, “Shut the damned thing down as soon as feasible.” I really like looking at clean water and clean shorelines.

Working Dad, you must understand that if you present too many facts or questions to someone like fred, his mind shuts down and is unable to respond with a clear answer. The only thing that he/she (Liberals in general) will resort to trying smear republicans and any body else that do not and will not conform to their views of life.

For the life of me, I don’t understand why the State of Michigan is bending over backwards to allow a Canadian company to take an enormously risky shortcut through Michigan’s #1 natural asset in order to transport most of the oil back to Canada, which ships it to foreign countries? The only logical answer is that Enbridge is lining people’s pockets. No other explanation makes sense, as the risks that Michigan is taking in this endeavor FAR outweigh the benefits.

About The Author

Andrew Heller has been an enduringly popular newspaper columnist in Michigan for a long, long, long time. He wrote his first column for the Escanaba Daily Press way back in 1979. It was about his … Continue Reading

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